During the legal process, it got darker, because I wasn’t the first; Brianna and Ethan had been together for five years, she scouted victims—single, stable, vulnerable—while he studied them like prey, becoming whatever they needed, and then came the “loan,” the “investment,” the slow extraction, and before me they’d already destroyed four women, one losing her business, one filing bankruptcy, one attempting suicide, none able to prove anything—until I ended up under that bed while they talked like villains instead of actors.
Derek wasn’t the mastermind, but he was the key, because he supplied confidential financial information and took forty percent of every successful scam, and when my lawyer told me that, I didn’t cry; I went hollow for a moment, and then something hardened into steel.